Tony Pulis has admitted that keeping West Bromwich Albion in the Premier League is the biggest challenge of his managerial career – and the Midlands club are not ruling out the possibility of selling Saido Berahino in the transfer window to help their new head coach achieve that aim.

Speaking on the day that he was presented at The Hawthorns as Alan Irvine’s successor, Pulis said that it was wrong to view him as a miracle-worker guaranteed to preserve Albion’s top-flight status. The 56-year-old said that there was no room for complacency – “That’s one of the worst words in the dictionary” – and that he hopes to bring in two or three players to inject new life into a team one point and one place above the relegation zone.

Although Berahino is the club’s leading scorer this season with nine goals in all competitions, it is not impossible that the 21-year-old, who was called up to the England squad in November, will be sold to generate additional funds. Berahino seems to have a magnetic attraction to controversy – his latest misdemeanour saw him arrested on suspicion of drink-driving in November – and, with a clutch of leading clubs showing interest, Albion may be tempted to cash in on a player who could be considered more trouble than he is worth at times.

Terry Burton, Albion’s technical director, said that Pulis would decide on Berahino’s future. “Tony’s a totally realistic football man. He will do whatever is best for the football club,” said Burton, who suggested that £20m would not be enough to prise the striker away from The Hawthorns. “If Tony needs to sell somebody for something else, he’ll sell them. If he wants to keep somebody in, he’ll keep them.”

Pulis, who will watch Saturday’s third-round FA Cup tie at home against non-league Gateshead from the stands, has no illusions about the size of the task ahead. He expressed his alarm at Albion’s tally of only four league wins across the whole of 2014 – “I was told that stat today, which is pretty drastic in lots of respects” – and insisted that long-term plans could wait. “There is one target – stay up,” Pulis said.

Crystal Palace were in a more precarious position when the Welshman took over at Selhurst Park in November 2013 – anchored to the foot of the table with four points from 11 matches – before turning the club’s fortunes round to such an extent that he was named the Premier League manager of the year. But Pulis believes that Albion is a tougher proposition because of the timing of his appointment and the rot that has set in over the last two years.

Asked whether it was his biggest challenge in 23 years of management, Pulis replied: “Oh yes, because it’s such a short period [until the end of the season] and this has been going on at West Brom for a while now. This hasn’t just happened, it hasn’t just fallen off, this has been going on for a while – since Roy [Hodgson] left it’s dropped off a bit. So there’s a lot of work to be done and you have to give the chairman [Jeremy Peace] a lot of credit because he understands now that that is the situation.”

The notion that he is a “miracle worker”, because of the job he did at Palace last season, is not something that sits easily with Pulis. “Am I comfortable with it? No. It’s just my job,” he said. “I’m just a basic, hard-working, honest guy who I think can coach. I think I motivate players very well and organise them and get them set up very well and I think players enjoy playing for me. There is nothing plastic about me.”

The former Stoke manager accepts, however, that his image has changed on the back of his achievement at Palace. “Yes, and I think it’s amazing. You look at what we achieved at Stoke over 10 years, then you go to Palace for seven months and become a completely different animal. But that is perception and that’s most probably what life is about.”

Pulis insisted that he was comfortable working with Burton as part of Albion’s continental structure and said that he had no problem with being called ’head coach’ rather than ’manager’. “You can call be bottle washer if you like,” he said. “The title makes no difference so long as I know there are specific responsibilities I am in charge of.”